In this paper, we prove a necessary and sufficient condition for the edge universality of sample covariance matrices with general population. We consider sample covariance matrices of the form $\mathcal Q = TX(TX)^{*}$, where $X$ is an $M_2\times N$ random matrix with $X_{ij}=N^{-1/2}q_{ij}$ such that $q_{ij}$ are $i.i.d.$ random variables with zero mean and unit variance, and $T$ is an $M_1 \times M_2$ deterministic matrix such that $T^* T$ is diagonal. We study the asymptotic behavior of the largest eigenvalues of $\mathcal Q$ when $M:=\min\{M_1,M_2\}$ and $N$ tend to infinity with $\lim_{N \to \infty} {N}/{M}=d \in (0, \infty)$. We prove that the Tracy-Widom law holds for the largest eigenvalue of $\mathcal Q$ if and only if $\lim_{s \rightarrow \infty}s^4 \mathbb{P}(\vert q_{ij} \vert \geq s)=0$ under mild assumptions of $T$. The necessity and sufficiency of this condition for the edge universality was first proved for Wigner matrices by Lee and Yin [34].

We derive the alternating arm exponents of the critical Ising model. We obtain six different patterns of alternating boundary arm exponents which correspond to the boundary conditions (⊖⊕), (⊖ free) and (free free), and the alternating interior arm exponents.

We compute the almost-sure Hausdorff dimension of the double points of chordal SLE$_\kappa$ for $\kappa > 4$, confirming a prediction of Duplantier--Saleur (1989) for the contours of the FK model. We also compute the dimension of the cut points of chordal SLE$_\kappa$ for $\kappa > 4$ as well as analogous dimensions for the radial and whole-plane SLE$_\kappa(\rho)$ processes for $\kappa > 0$. We derive these facts as consequences of a more general result in which we compute the dimension of the intersection of two flow lines of the formal vector field $e^{ih/\chi}$, where $h$ is a Gaussian free field and $\chi > 0$, of different angles with each other and with the domain boundary.